The Art of Suicide
by redruMxx13
Summary: "Everyone's afraid, but that's no excuse." Spans the events of Mass Effect 2, focusing on a relationship between Commander Shepard and Thane Krios as well as the interactions that take place amongst the crew as they embark on their mission to stop the Collectors. Some dialogue and scenarios have been improvised/altered for this story. *I do not claim any ownership of M.E.
1. Chapter 1: Suffocation

It's raining fire.

At least, that's what it feels like.

Cracks fire through the air and the ear-splitting sound of metal being torn apart by a powerful laser shrieks in my ears. The crew are dashing about like mad, hustling to get into escape pods as white hot beams decimate the Normandy. The air is thick and feels like it's boiling my skin. Flames explode and whip about as a small gas canister ignites somewhere nearby. There are already a few corpses lying on deck. _We need to get out._

I reach my armor and try to put my helmet on as calmly as I can. Survival instinct kicks in, and I push the images of the crew's bodies into the confines of my mind, corralling them into a part of my brain that is reserved for nightmares. I hear the helmet's seals click into place, and the sound calms me down just a bit.

"Commander!"

_First things first._ We need to send for help. "The distress beacon is ready for launch."

"Will the Alliance get here in time?" The stressful tone in Kaidan's voice comes through clearly. A powerful strike on the ship sends it into a rocking spasm, and I nearly lose my footing.

"The Alliance won't abandon us. We just need to hold on. Get everyone onto the escape shuttles."

"Joker's still in the cockpit. He won't abandon ship. I'm not leaving either."

Irritation sears through my brain like the beam cutting through the Normandy.

"Get to the damned shuttle! I'll haul Joker's crippled ass out of here." My reply was far more harsh than I had intended, but right now every cell in my body was in survival mode. We needed to get out, and Kaidan's heroics had no place here.

"Commander-"

"Get the hell out of here!" My voice nearly cracks with anger and fear, and Kaidan pauses for a moment before turning and dashing off to get any survivors onto the shuttles. As I begin to make my way to the cockpit, I wonder what the _hell _could be attacking us. It couldn't be a geth ship- no geth ship I'd ever seen could unleash this much devastation onto another vessel.

Joker's distress call is channeled into the intercom system in my helmet. "Mayday, mayday! This is SSV Normandy. We've suffered heavy damage from an unknown enemy! _Come on baby, hold together, hold together..._"

The door opens and if this wasn't really happening right now, I would've had to stop and admire the unbelievable view. A nearby planet's massive figure looms in space above me, casting an almost ethereal light on the husk that is left of the Normandy's main deck. Bits of metal have jettisoned off into space and they twinkle as they float past me in the absence of gravity. The pieces of metal that still remain attached glow hot red like the end of a cigarette. I have no time to stargaze, though. I painstakingly walk to the cockpit and it feels like I'm swimming through some sort of invisible jello. Finally, I reach Joker.

"Come on, Joker! We have to get out of here!"

"No, I won't abandon the Normandy! I can still save her!" He turns his attention back to the control deck and furrows his eyebrows with determination.

"The Normandy's gone, Joker. Going down with the ship isn't going to change that."

He stares wistfully at the Normandy for a few moments before finally answering me. "...Yeah, alright. Help me up- wait, they're coming around for another attack!" I turn around just in time to watch a glowing beam of light slice right through the ship, dangerously close to the two of us. _Time's up._

I grab Joker's arm and pull him from the chair, and in haste I hear a bone snap. I wince, but I know it can't be helped. A life is worth more than an arm.

"Ah, watch the arm!" Joker groans in pain as I pull him up and help him to the escape pod. I toss him into the shuttle and just as I'm about to jump in and launch our asses out of this train wreck, a devastating blow rocks the Normandy. I grip the side of the doorway as tightly as I can, but it's no use. My body is thrown and I hit the wall- painfully- before I grab hold of whatever I can, my lower body floating in zero gravity. "Commander!"

_"Shepard!"_

The last thing I hear is Joker's cry before a loud explosion nearly shatters my eardrums and I feel my grip release.

_An explosion of ink before my eyes._

The shockwave sends me dangerously close to unconsciousness. I see black shapes shift in front of my vision before I manage to reach total awareness again. Everything's silent except for a strange hissing sound. I waver in and out of consciousness for a few seconds. Suddenly I recognize the sound and a wave of nausea sweeps over me.

It's my oxygen.

Quickly my body jerks as I grasp for nothing in particular. _No, this can't be happening._ My body begins to twist up as I frantically reach around the back of my suit, trying desperately and hopelessly to find something, _anything_ that will fix this. Another terrible realization suddenly strikes me like a venomous snake- I have nowhere to go. Even if I managed to drift into a nearby planet's orbit, by the time I reached it's surface I would be a flaming, molten corpse, and even if the speed of the fall didn't ignite me like a straw doll, the landing would likely kill me. Either end was just as terrifying. I would float in space and panic until I ran out of oxygen- which, by the sound of that hissing, would not take too long- or I would get sucked into orbit and ignite as I sped quickly towards fatal impact.

Suddenly I begin to feel like I'm inhaling through cellophane and it dawns on me that my oxygen reserves are all but exhausted. My arms and legs jerk a few more times and I see spots in front of me. In the few seconds that my brain stays aware before death, I think of everything I'm leaving behind- my crew, my responsibilities, my life.

A few bright colors dart over my field of vision before quickly diluting to pastel clouds, and as they fade to an inky black that matches the cosmos around me, destined now to be my tomb, I can't help but wish it hadn't ended this way.


	2. Chapter 2: Genesis

"She's waking up."

There are no words to describe the things I feel- "pure pain" comes close, possibly- as my eyelids flutter open slowly. Fuzzy, formless shapes materialize in front of my eyes for a few seconds before an incredible flaming pain stings them. It feels as if my eyeballs are being doused with liquid nitrogen. I want to scream- only I can't. I can't even tell what's going on.

"Shepard. Don't try to move."

The voice sounds muffled, like she's talking through cotton. Suddenly, I see her- dark hair, pale blue eyes, a warm yet concerned expression on her face. I wonder if possibly I've arrived at the heaven I never even believed in, and this is an angel preparing me for an eternity of pleasure and divine perfection. But the relentless pain strikes me again, and I can tell that this is no heaven. Maybe it's just the opposite, and she's a demon in some type of intricate disguise. The devil's finest strands of silk were woven together over a rotting corpse to form flawless skin that looks milky and soft to the touch, but upon touching it you'll burst into flames. I want to cry out, but I can't even move. The most I can do is twist my face into a grimace as shocks of pain attack every point on my body.

The voices muffle even more as they quickly work to get the situation under control, and before I know it, I'm slipping into unconsciousness again, falling into a dreamless sleep that feels more like a coma to me.

* * *

The heaviness of sleep is beginning to drip off of me. It almost feels like I'm coming down from some sort of bad high. _I'm waking up..._

It's a sentiment that seems almost alien to me for a reason I can't comprehend. The warm silence around me slowly begins to fade away and it's replaced by the angry blaring of a siren. Within a few minutes, I'm awake. Where I expected to feel pain, I feel some sort of odd complacency in my muscles that can only be described as perfect efficiency. I sit up on the table and glance down at my hands, turning them over and inspecting every inch of my skin. It's completely unmarred. I know that there should be wounds, but I can't exactly recall why. I have no idea how I ended up here or where I've been. Everything is foggy.

A voice comes over the intercom. "Shepard, can you hear me? Go to the cabinet and get the pistol."

I hop off the table and walk over to the nearest cabinet and pull out a small pistol. Nothing spectacular. I follow the woman's instructions and take cover before an explosion throws open the doors at the end of the room. She leads me past a few hacked mechs, which are no challenge for me. Firing the gun feels like second nature, but something about it feels different than typical muscle memory. It's as if my nerves and muscle cells have almost been programmed for this. Like it's too easy. It feels like I've been asleep for far too long for it to be _this_ easy.

Finally I come into a large room and a man turns to face me. He looks like he's maybe in his twenties, with dark skin and almond shaped eyes. His eyes widen slightly and a stray bullet causes him to duck for cover behind the glass ledge. I dash forward and duck for cover beside him.

"Shepard? Wow, things must really be bad if Miranda woke you up." His voice is full of incredulity. He seems to be inspecting me.

"Not to sound rude, but who are you? Mind tell me what's going on?"

"Jacob Taylor. And it's hard for me to say right now. All I can tell is that somebody's been messing around with the mechs."

"Where are we?"

"You must have a lot of questions, huh." He glances at the LOKI mechs and chews his lower lip for second, successfully dodging my question. "Alright, let me give you the short version. Your ship went down in flames after being attacked two years ago. You died, but we found your body floating around like space junk and Project Lazarus brought you back. It's taken two years to restore you back to working condition."

_You died._

_Two years.  
_

His words echo in my mind for a few seconds like gusts of wind trapped in a tunnel. Now it all makes sense. All of a sudden I remember almost everything; the attack on the Normandy, herding the crew into space shuttles and floating through space, suffocating. Have I really been gone for _two years?_ What happened to my crew members?

"I've been dead for two years?"

"Yeah, and you were in really rough shape when they brought you in too. Look, we can discuss this all you want after if you help me get us out of here. Deal?"

"Deal."

I shoot down a few of the rogue mechs and Jacob manages to stem the flow with a biotic attack. After a couple of minutes we've managed to get the situation under control. We stand up and he holsters his gun then throws his hands up in mock defeat. "Alright, I promised you I'd give you some answers. So what do you wanna know?"

"What happened to my crew?"

"Most of them made it out alive, but a few of them didn't make it."

"You don't look like a member of the Alliance."

"Well, I used to be. Not anymore."

I can probably think of a million more questions I'd like to ask him, but now's not the time. Obviously something's up- mechs don't just go rogue and start attacking out of the blue. Curiosity is nagging at me, but I push it to the back of my mind for now. Something tells me this is the start of something a lot bigger than I can even imagine- a new destiny.

"Alright, that's all I need to know right now. Let's get out of here."

"Glad to hear it. There's a shuttle station not too far from here. Come on, I'll lead the way."


	3. Chapter 3: Intel

**AN: Wow, FINALLY getting to update! I started college recently so I've been waaay too busy to do anything, but a random burst of inspiration struck me tonight and I hate to continue. I decided screw my 8AM class tomorrow, I'm staying up all hours of the night to get this chapter banged out. Alright, let's do this..**

**Also, thank you to any reviewers! You guys all helped me to progress into this next chapter. Naomi: Thank you for the review, I appreciate the constructive criticism and I'll integrate it into my future writing. I do have to say though that as I stated in the story description, this story is not just meant to focus just on Thane and Shepard. It also involves the other crew members and their interactions. I felt that Shepard's death was crucial so I wanted to focus a lot on it in the beginning. I didn't intend this to be a one-shot that just only has to do with the Shep/Thane romance. I intend to build up the story from the beginning and gradually introduce Thane while including major points in Shepard's rebirth. I do plan on writing some Thane/Shep oneshots in the future, these may be better suited to your tastes. I hope this does not offend you at all! I'll try to make my writing more to-the-point from now on.**

* * *

It'd been a week since I woke from my two year coma, and already things were beginning to fall into the monotonously peaceful lull of space life. Well, as peaceful as possible, anyway. I'd been put in command of the Normandy SR-2, which bears a striking resemblance to the original Normandy except for the fact that it's been essentially pimped out. This Normandy was equipped with a kitchen, captain's quarters, and a dozen other rooms and amenities that made it all the more worthy of a ship. Joker had been recruited as pilot, much to his satisfaction- well, until he met EDI, the ship's AI. I tried to assure him that having an AI aboard was a plus and that it would help us avoid another fiasco, but it was no use. EDI had become a permanent thorn in the side of Joker's pride. He asserted that it was like some form of "ship cancer." _Must be a pilot thing.  
_

On top of that, I'd been given a versatile and capable crew. Jacob had been assigned to work with me, and soon after meeting him at the Lazarus station I'd met Miranda. I immediately recognized her as the woman I saw upon waking up for the first time. She introduced herself as the woman in charge of Project Lazarus and answered all of my questions about it. Turns out I'd been given cybernetic implants on top of everything else. This would explain the way it was so easy for me to fall back into combat after being dead for two years. The rest of my crew, so far, seemed to be fit for our upcoming task of taking on the Collectors, an insidious race bent on kidnapping human colonists for nefarious purposes. We had good reason to believe they were working for the Reapers, especially since our visit to Horizon. For some of my crewmates, I'd had to go through quite some work to recruit them. I wouldn't soon forget the shitstorm that had been unleashed on Purgatory when I'd gone to get Jack.

I finished washing my face and rinsed it off, watching the suds swirl down the drain. I rose and looked into the mirror for a moment. It was the same face, the same Shepard I'd been two years ago- why did things feel different? I touched my skin for a moment, softly palpating the mandible underneath it. Same strongly shaped yet gentle jawline that I'd had before. Same large, almond-shaped eyes, olive with the slightest flecks of gold. I'd never considered myself to fall into the typical description of beautiful- you know, tiny features, soft heart-shaped face, tame eyes- but I wasn't unattractive by any means, and the genes I'd inherited from my middle eastern father had never failed to pique the interest of men. I'd had boyfriends of course, and even a couple girlfriends in the past. I sported the same messy, short black locks that I'd had when I'd taken my last breath. I tousled my hair with my hands and decided with a sigh that it was always at the very least _slightly _unruly- usually I kept it fairly straight and under control, but even the tiniest hint of humidity brought out its natural texture, arraying it with soft, wavy loose curls that seemed to give my face the youthful look of an unruly teenager. For years I had kept it shaved as short as possible, but in the months before the Normandy had been destroyed I'd gotten lazy and let it grow out a bit. By now it framed my face quite nicely. Besides, the Normandy's quota for a bare-headed female had already been filled. I laughed to myself for a moment as I imagined Jack decked out in antique western attire, rubbing her nearly bald cranium and twirling a pistol in her hand: _"This town ain't big enough for the two of us, Shepard."_

I exited the bathroom and decided I'd check in on Garrus. I was curious about how well his scars were healing since the notorious Archangel had taken a slug to the face on Omega.

"Garrus." I knocked on the medal siding of the door frame leading into the battery room. He turned to face me and smiled- well, the Turian equivalent of a smile, anyway- before wincing and holding a clawed hand over his patched up scar.

"If these stitches ripped just now, Shepard, I'm telling Dr. Chakwas it was your doing."

"Be my guest. Maybe if you hadn't pissed off every merc within a 500 lightyear radius of Omega, you wouldn't have it in the first place," I teased. I punched him playfully in the arm. "So how is it to be back on the Normandy? Well, sort of. Are you settling in?"

"It's a good change of scenery. Anything is a better than Omega, though." He patted a metal railing. "She's a nice ship."

"I'll say. Cerberus was really willing to empty its pockets out for this project." I looked around the battery room before meeting the gaze of the man who'd been my loyal partner on many missions before my... _death._ His beady silver eyes met mine and I could feel a minor but palpable level of discomfort pass between us. Clearly neither of us was really ready to discuss what had happened or the process leading up to my return from death.

"What's it like, Shepard?" His inquiry was stated in such a quiet volume that I could've missed it had the awkwardness of the whole topic not given birth to such thick silence.

"I don't really know. I'm still learning, I guess." I looked down and narrowed my eyes a bit as I tried to pull the right words out of my head. I was failing. "I mean, I still feel like me. Some reflexes are so much more fine-tuned though. It just feels different." I probably could have told him a lot more, but frankly, I didn't feeling like elaborating. He seemed to understand, and quickly came up with a way to dismiss the whole thing.

"Well, I should get back to doing calibrations." I nodded, not at all suspecting how much time Garrus would go on to spend on these calibrations of his. _Little did I know._

"Yeah, I'll leave that up to you. Get Normandy 2.0 into perfectly calibrated fighting shape, alright?"

"Will do, Shep."

I had a quick meal in the mess hall before I headed up to the Captain's quarters to review a few more dossiers the Illusive Man had sent me. I leaned forward in my desk chair and opened the next dossier. _The Justicar. _I'd done a bit of reading on her so far, and it seemed like it was going to be no less daunting than any of my other recruitment missions so far. Maybe I'd wait a bit and recruit a few more members before taking that mission on. I clicked onto the next dossier.

_The Assassin. _My eyebrows raised a bit in curiosity. An assassin? That would definitely be useful. _And interesting. _I did some quick reading before deciding that my interest was most definitely piqued.

_"Thane Krios_  
_ -Quick-kill biotic specialist_  
_ -Expert sniper_  
_ Thane Krios is a drell trained from childhood as an elite assassin, proficient in both long-range sniping kills and close infiltration. He has slowed his activities in recent years but is rumored to have a target on Illium."_

So, Illium it was. I was an expert sniper myself. I'd be having some fun with this one for sure. _Alright, Thane Krios. Let's see who reaches that target first. _

I disconnected from the extranet before brushing my teeth and climbing into bed to get some rest. "EDI, tell Joker we're heading to Illium and tell the crew to get some rest and be ready for briefing an hour after arrival."

"Affirmative, Commander. Expected arrival at Nos Astra will be in approximately 7 hours and 34 minutes."

Before I fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, I realized with sleep-muted shock that I had never met a drell before.


End file.
